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It was a beautiful site, the end of a grassy dune, declining gradually toward the tree-fringed sea; the yellow slopes, cut by avenues and broken by dwarf table-lands, were long afterwards recalled to my memory, when sighting the fair but desolate scenery south of Paraguayan Asuncion.
A golden world indeed; just what he had expected to find. A golden sea, a golden sky, the very sand and grasses at his feet appeared to be golden too. Now, what was that? About twenty paces beneath him, on the seaward side of the dune, he caught a glimpse of another golden object, an unusual object, the nature of which he did not at once identify.
Somebody threw a tennis-ball at her; she caught it and hurled it in return; and for a few minutes the white, felt-covered balls flew back and forth from scores of graceful, eager hands. A moment or two passed when no balls came her way; she turned and walked to the foot of a dune and seated herself cross-legged on the hot sand.
A'body kens yer gran'father was naething but the blin' piper o' Portcloddie. This was news to Robert probably false, considering the quarter whence it came. But his mother-wit did not forsake him. 'Weel, Mr. Lumley, he answered, 'didna he pipe weel? Daur ye tell me 'at he didna pipe weel? as weel's ye cud hae dune 't yersel', noo, Mr. Lumley?
Animal life, however, there was in abundance, and we had no need to leave our path to shoot as much game as we required. At times, on cresting the brow of a dune, we would come close upon a herd of gemsbok in the long "aar" beneath us; magnificent animals, whose long, straight, saber-like horns are feared even by the lion.
"She 's no needin' a man tae keep her," and Hillocks proceeded to review the situation, "for Becca's hed a gude place, an' she disna fling awa' her siller on dress. As for John, a' canna mak him oot, for he gets his stockin's darned and his white stock dune as weel an' maybe better than if he wes mairried." The kirkyard could see no solution of the problem, and Hillocks grew pessimistic.
O'Shea passed the shivering pony, and went into the opening of the dune, which was now all in shadow because of the black cloud in the sky. Inside was a small valley. Its sand-banks might have been made of bleached bones, they looked so gray and dead. Just within the opening was an unexpected sight a row of hooded and muffled figures stood upright in the sand.
"Then he had dreamed a startling and vivid dream that had seemed half reality. He saw three men come down over the big dune to close beside where he lay rough-looking men in a costume of long ago, with cocked hats, broad breeches, and buckled shoes; and the moonlight shone on the brass hilts of their cutlasses and pistols.
So they measured a distance five times over, and then, from where Tom lay, he could see the man with the queue drive another peg just at the foot of a sloping rise of sand that swept up beyond into a tall white dune marked sharp and clear against the night sky behind.
He wasna ill-willy, as the bairns say. But the doctor had some sair wark, I thoucht, to mak that oot, seein' we war a' the children o' wrath, accordin' to him, born in sin, and inheritin' the guilt o' Adam's first trespass. I dinna think Dr. Soulis cud say that God had dune the best he cud for 's. But he never tried to say onything like that.
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